aka: Coen Brothers

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Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957) have been making films and thumbing their noses at traditional genre boundaries since 1984. Bouncing from Film Noir to screwball comedy, from quirky indies to big-budget studio pieces, they function as a two-man writer-director-producer-editor Sibling Team.

The brothers are known for their meticulous planning, not least the incredibly detailed storyboards they create for every shot of every film. This saves time during production (as they can show their cinematographer exactly what they want done) and makes the films look unbelievably cool.

Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand - whom he met on the set of their first film Blood Simple. - since 1984. She's appeared in seven of their films, including Fargo for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She said of the event "After all these years sleeping with the director, it's finally paid off." Ethan has been married to Tricia Cooke since 1990, who worked as an editor on several of the brothers' films.

All of their films are scored by Carter Burwell. All of their films are edited by Roderick Jaynes. He doesn't exist. He is a pseudonym for the brothers themselves. They like to have creative control on their films. Yeah.

The company that HI works for in Raising Arizona is Hudsucker Industries.

The law firm Tuckman Marsh is brought up in both Burn After Reading and A Serious Man.

In Raising Arizona Gale Snoats uses Fop pomade. In O' Brother, Where Art Thou? when Ulysses stops to try and pick up his pomade (Dapper Dan) the store owner tells him that they don't have Dapper Dan, but they have Fop.

Easter Egg: They occasionally hide jokes in the credits; for example, No Country for Old Men has a credit for "the one right tool" (referencing a line from one of Chigurh's Hannibal Lectures during the film), and A Serious Man has a disclaimer at the end of the credits assuring the audience that "No Jews were harmed during the making of this film.", True Grit credits Ethan Coen's son Buster as Mr. Damon's Abs Double" and Burn After Reading'' credits "The Walrus".

Genre-Busting: Several of their films are simply indescribable in terms of genre.

The Big Lebowski is arguably the most prominent example in all of film. It's part stoner film, part film noir, part political satire, part musical, and the narrator is convinced that it's a western.

They don't just bend genres, but dissect 'em.

Greed: A major part of their work concerns the destruction money can do to a person's life(s).

Hanlon's Razor: One of the main themes in all their films is human stupidity and its horrible consequences

The Hyena: The two of them have what's been referred to as a "collective laugh" and often get the other going when one of them starts it. According to Joel's wife Frances McDormand it's genetic, since their father has it as well and her son with Joel has also picked it up.

Idiot Ball: Their "selfish and unrealistic" characters are notoriously known for carrying this, to the extent of pushing things to an Idiot Plot. This is however a prime example of Tropes Are Not Bad, though, because their work is actually better for it.

Subverted in Raising Arizona (I have your baby, simply because I want a baby.), Fargo (I have your wife, just like we planned.), and The Big Lebowski (I know your wife's missing and I'm strapped for cash.)

Played with twice in Burn After Reading: Chad and Linda try to pull this on Osbourne, whereupon Hilarity Ensues. Later, Linda tries to invoke this with the Russians to secure Chad's release not realizing that he's already been killed by Harry.

Narrator: Visser in Blood Simple., Hi in Raising Arizona, Moses in The Hudsucker Proxy, The Stranger in The Big Lebowski, Ed in The Man Who Wasn't There, Bell in No Country for Old Men, 40-Year-Old Mattie in True Grit.

Perhaps the best example of this comes from Fargo. All of the jas and jeezes, as well as all of Jerry's stutters, were specifically written. Also, Peter Stormare first read the line "Where is pancakes house?" as "Where's the pancake house?", thinking it was a typo. The Coens put him in his place, saying "We don't make typos."

Played extremely and intentionally straight in True Grit; the diction itself (for instance, the lack of contractions) is in fact authentic, but the dialogue itself is practically Shakespearean.

The commemorative DVD releases of several of their films (such as Blood Simple. and The Big Lebowski) contain introductions (and, in the case of Blood Simple, an entire commentary) by "Forever Young Films", a fictional organization dedicated to preserving "classic" films (but really the Coens' way of poking fun at self-important cinephiles and pretentious film critics).

The Coens like to make it seem like Roderick Jaynes, the credited editor on all their films, is a real person. It's really just the pseudonym they use due to guild restrictions on shared editing credit.

Self-Deprecation: A collection of their scripts had an introduction written by their "editor," Roderick Jaynes, which basically slagged off the brothers as incompetent film-makers. Roderick Jaynes is actually a pseudonym for the brothers themselves.

Llewellyn Moss and Sheriff Ed Bell in No Country for Old Men are under the presumption that they don't live in a Crapsack World. Moss gets himself and his wife killed because of it, and Bell ends up realizing the world went to hell a long time ago, but he was too idealistic to accept it.

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